Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Casa Velha : a contribution to a better understanding of Machado de Assis

1983; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 60; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382832000360031

1469-3550

John Gledson,

Linguistics and Education Research

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: CASA VELHA [J. M. MACHADO DE ASSIS]MACHADO DE ASSIS, JOAQUIM MARIA (1839–1908) Notes 1. Machado de Assis, Casa Velha, Lúcia Miguel-Pereira (São Paulo 1968), 27–29. 2. Casa Velha, ed. Miguel-Pereira, 20. 3. Casa Velha, ed. Miguel-Pereira, 17–19. J. Galante de Sousa, though less dogmatic than Miguel-Pereira about date, is no less sure that the work is inferior in quality: ‘Devemos lembrar, entretanto, que outros escritos aparecem no referido periódico, nessa ocasião e em épocas posteriores, nos quais se desmentem as grandes qualidades do contista. Tratar-se-á de altos e baixos no potencial artístico do autor, ou realmente do aproveitamento de “fundos de gaveta”?’ (Bibliografia de Machado de Assis [Rio de Janeiro 1955], 563). 4. Casa Velha has been the subject of remarkably little literary (as opposed to biographical) speculation, as far as I can discover. Dieter Woll, Machado de Assis: Die Entwicklung seines erzählerischen Werkes (Braunschweig 1972), 75–77, notes the parallels between the plots of Casa Velha, Helena, Iaiá Garcia and the early story ‘Virginius’, but, although he questions Lúcia Miguel-Pereira's dating, he still regards Casa Velha as an anachronistic and conservative work. It seems that critical preconceptions about what is or is not conservative have coloured everyone's view of the work. The early dating is merely a symptom of these views. J. C. Kinnear is perhaps the only critic to have seen that Casa Velha might have a logical place in Machado's development. In a brief comment in ‘Machado de Assis: to believe or not to believe’, MLR, LXXI (1976), 63, he notes the importance of the first-person narration. 5. Raymundo Faoro, Machado de Assis: A Pirâmide e o Trapézio (São Paulo 1974) and Roberto Schwarz, Ao Vencedor as Batatas (São Paulo 1977). 6. ‘Dialética da malandragem’, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, 8 (1970), 67–89. 7. Ao Vencedor as Batatas is the first part of a projected longer work on Machado's novels. Little in this book, however, or in Schwarz's more recent introduction to a Spanish translation of Quincas Borba (Caracas 1979), ix–xxxi, leads one to suspect that Machado might have had a radically unconventional view of history and politics. See, e.g., his discussion of the rôle of the Paraguayan War in Iaiá Garcia (Ao Vencedor, 115–17). 8. This and all quotations from the text of Casa Velha refers to the most available edition, that of the Obra Completa (Rio de Janeiro 1962), II, 998–1044. 9. Schwarz argues, convincingly in my view, that the moral difficulties of women who cannot love without seeming ambitious or ‘aventureira’ are the real subject of Helena, not incest (Ao Vencedor 109–10). 10. Casa Velha, ed. Miguel-Pereira, 26–27. 11. See Benedetto Varchi, Opere (Milan c.1900), I, 442–43. I am grateful to Miss Lucrezia Zaina, of the Liverpool University Department of Italian, for showing me an expurgated edition: Benedetto Varchi, Opere (Milan 1834). The relevant passage is in I, 500. 12. The mention of this event seems calculated to cast the worst possible light on the Catholic Church. The Pope himself provided an indulgence for his son, who was never punished. The scandal was used by the Lutherans to attack the Church: ‘Questa abbominevol nuova pervenuta con istupore e querimonia d'ognuno nell'Alemagna, diede larga materia di ragionare a’ Luterani, dicendo in derisione e vituperio de’ papi e dei papisti, questo essere un nuovo modo de martirizzare i Santi’ (Varchi, 443). In his recent Vida e Obra de Machado de Assis (Rio de Janeiro 1981), III, 82–84, R. Magalhães Júnior goes into considerable detail concerning this passage, informing us that Varchi's works were in Machado's library. He fails to understand the import of the reference, however: ‘Tal passagem nada tem que ver com o desenvolvimento da intriga, embora acrescente cerca de meia página à narrativa… ’ (82). Quite consistent in his own beliefs about Machado's respectability, he is forced to accuse the novelist himself of inconsistency: ‘Nisso, ele inverteu um dos seus próprios preceitos morais: o de que o pior, depois do escândalo, é a publicação do escândalo.’ 13. Chateaubriand, Oeuvres Romanesques et Voyages (Paris 1969), 105–499. 14. It is true, of course, that the Romantic movement proper did not begin in Brazil until 1836, with the publication of the review Niterói. But this merely explains why the priest is unaware of what he is. Machado is in fact characterizing him with great historical accuracy. He may well be linking him with an important historical figure, Frei Francisco do Monte Alverne, a popular and influential preacher, highly influenced by Chateaubriand, and who belonged to an earlier generation. See Antônio Cândido, Formação da Literatura Brasileira (São Paulo 1964), I, 299–308. The phrases estudos clássicos and tendência idealista are carefully chosen. 15. See, for example, the portrait by Simplício de Sá, ‘Visita dos Imperadores à Casa dos Expostos’, reproduced in Heitor Lyra, História de Dom Pedro 11 ed. Alexandre Eulálio (Belo Horizonte and São Paulo 1977), I, plate 3 (following p. 65). This portrait served for a lithograph of Sisson (1859) which can be found reproduced, e.g., in Pedro Calmon, História do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro 1959), V, 1485. Lithographs such as these were very important in conveying images of important political and historical figures to Brazilians. Machado's most famous reference to them is in ‘O velho Senado’ (Obra Completa, II, 636), in which his evocation of the Senate as he had known it in 1860 is inspired by a series of Sisson's lithographs. 16. Machado de Assis, Obra Completa, II, 654. 17. The most famous of his attacks on liberty, the dissolution of the Constituinte in 1824, is mentioned in dramatic terms by Colonel Raimundo on p. 1026. 18. It is of course true that her father is not the ex-minister (though he might have been); the reference to the loss of the parents is more general than that. For an earlier use of dates in such a symbolic manner, see the short story ‘Valério’, published in December 1874, which recounts the career of the dependent hero, ignored by the family to whom he dedicates himself, and who ‘veio à luz com a revolução de 1831’ (Machado de Assis, Obras Completas [Rio de Janeiro 1957], XVII, 7–48). 19. The shared name is strange, however; it may reflect unflatteringly on the volatile character of the ‘Patriarch’, who has often raised controversy among historians, though, as far as I am aware, Machado never mentioned him without respect. For the historical view, see Emília Viotti da Costa, ‘José Bonifácio: Mito e Histórias’, in Da Monarquia à República: Momentos Decisivos (São Paulo 1979), 53–108. 20. A Juventude de Machado de Assis (Rio de Janeiro 1971), 204–31 and 271–309. 21. The use of ‘capelas particulares’ was in fact common in Brazil in the nineteenth century, but it was by no means uncontested. Far from it; as Machado's readers would very likely be aware, the Church increasingly opposed such ‘domestic religion’, and in 1886, the Internuncio published a circular letter condemning the saying of Mass in houses. See Gilberto Freyre, Sobrados e Mucambos (Rio de Janeiro 1977), I, 123–24. 22. A strange detail: the priest's story begins with the following sentence: ‘Não desejo ao meu maior inimigo o que me aconteceu no mês de abril de 1839.’ In the story, nothing disastrous happens that one can surely date to April. The priest enters the house in February, and the crisis, of course, is in August. Did Machado change his plan? Or—more shocking yet—did he at first intend the sacrifice to coincide with Easter? Since Casa Velha was published in instalments, it would of course have been impossible for him to correct himself. 23. I am informed by Dr and Mrs R. F. Colson that the news could have taken up to a week to reach Rio, depending on wind and weather, which is often bad at that time of year. It would have come by schooner. 24. It is often difficult to be entirely certain of how conscious these symbolic patterns are. By the time we reach Dom Casmurro, where the same pattern isrepeated(aslshallshow),enoughevidenceinthewayofnames, etc., can be collated to make it impossible that Machado was not aware of what he was doing. Here, apart from the carefully planned association of Dona Antônia with the Virgin, the repeated references to martyrdom in a Christian context (the Storia Florentina, the Chateaubriand epic) make me think that the patterns were quite intentional, and worked out. 25. See Freyre, Sobrados e Mucambos, I, 95. 26. Ressurreição is used in this way by Helen Caldwell, The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis (Berkeley 1960), and A Mão e a Luva by Wilson Martins in História da Inteligência Brasileira (São Paulo 1977), III, 466–69. These are two cases amongst others—their exclusive interest in the question of Capitu's guilt or innocence, however, entirely prevents them from seeing Dom Casmurro, or the ‘precursors’, as wholes. 27. Casa Velha (999) and Dom Casmurro, in Obra Completa, 1,808. See also Eugênio Gomes, O Enigma de Capitu (Rio de Janeiro 1967), 59. 28. See Casa Velha, 1027. The baroness's challenge to the Colonel, ‘Preferia o seu amigo Feijó?’ is obviously sarcastic (Dom Casmurro, 8–10) 29. The parallel is also mentioned by Helen Caldwell, The Brazilian Othello, 40, as is the parallel between José Dias and St Joseph (47) though she does not see Machado's hint on the subject to the reader, quoted in the following note. 30. At one moment in Dom Casmurro, Machado points, through a chance remark of Bento's, to the connexion between José Dias and St Joseph: ‘Um dia, porém, um dos familiares que serviam de endossantes da letra [that is, José Dias], falou da necessidade de entregar o preço ajustado; está num dos capítulos primeiros. Minha mãe concordou e recolhi-me a S. José’ (887). The São José referred to is the seminary, but in the context, a possible meaning of the phrase is ‘I had recourse to St Joseph [José Dias]’—his main ally in the struggle to avoid going to the seminary. 31. Silviano Santiago, ‘A retórica da verossimilhança’, in Uma Literatura nos Trópicos (São Paulo 1978), 29–30. 32. Machado was brought up as a member of a family attached to a large house on the outskirts of Rio; the chief member of the family was Maria José de Mendonça, the widow of a minister, Bento Barroso Pereira. See Massa, A Juventude, 55, and Magalhães Júnior, Vida e Obra, 7–8. 33. A remarkable early short story, ‘Frei Simão’ (Obra Completa, II, 152–57), first published in 1864, portrays the unfettered operation of paternal authority. When there is a danger of Simão marrying Helena, a poor relation, his father simply sends him away and marries Helena to someone else. The only concession to subterfuge is that Simão is sent away, rather than simply forbidden to marry. The task of keeping him away is delegated to the father's correspondente, an ex-romancista who constructs the lying fictions which prevent his return. We are not told what these fictions are—something which leads one to think that Machado found it difficult to imagine what they might be. The results of this patriarchal despotism are predictably horrifying—the son goes mad, followed by the father himself. 34. Freyre, Sobrados e Mucambos, passim. 35. See Schwarz, Ao Vencedor as Batatas, 113–69. 36. See João Cabral de Melo Neto, ‘Poema(s) da cabra’, Poesias Completas (Rio de Janeiro 1968), 171.